ES South teacher to receive statewide social studies award

During his 14 years as a teacher, Michael Healey has won several awards and he’s earned numerous accolades from his students, peers and others.

The East Stroudsburg South High School social studies teacher was once awarded a United Nations CTAUN Best Practices Award for a project about HIV/AIDS awareness.

In 2013, because of the exceptional work of his social justice and global citizen student group ASPIRE, Healey earned the Pennsylvania State Education Association Excellence Award for Human Rights and Civil Rights in Educational Leadership for the state of Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, Healey will add another award to his trophy case when he’s presented with the Pennsylvania Council on the Social Studies Secondary Teacher of the Year Award at a ceremony in Harrisburg.

“I think the award is important in that people know that their taxpayer dollars are being used properly, that we are educating their young children,” Healey said on Monday.

The award from the PCSS, whose mission is to promote quality social studies education from kindergarten to higher learning, recognizes a secondary level classroom teacher who has demonstrated exceptional professionalism in several categories including the development and use of instructional materials with students in a creative and effective way.

The criteria for the recipient also includes the utilization of new research from social studies and related appropriate disciplines and a teacher who fosters a spirit of inquiry and the development of skills in students of acquiring, organizing, processing, and using information to make decisions related to a community, state, regional, national or international issue or concern.

“I could never imagine sitting at a desk or cubicle,” Healey said when asked what inspired him to become a teacher.

“Really, being a teacher you’re at the center point of so many different fields. You have your students, your community and I really feel that with teaching there’s so much creative energy that draws you every day to want to come in,” he said.

“Teaching is a call to public service and to understand that you’re giving the greatest resource every day that a family can give you — their young ones — I have a lot of respect for that every single day and I’m giving their young ones my best each and every day,” Healey said.

Healey has perhaps come to be best known for his work with his ASPIRE students, whom he takes to the United Nations at least twice a year, including for the International Peace Day where they get to bear member state flags at the Peace Bell Ringing Ceremony.

This year, 25 ASPIRE students were chosen to bear the state flags at the ceremony and they were also able to attend a conference in the historic General Assembly where guests included Dr. Jane Goodall, actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Douglas, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and others.

“Advising ASPIRE has been one of the highlights, certainly,” Healey said.

“I believe that every student who walks through the door is sent by a parent or guardian who wants the best for them and I do feel very privileged to be a teacher.”

If anything was more satisfying than being named teacher of the year, it’s knowing the individual who nominated him, Healey said.

“I was nominated by (former district superintendent) Sharon Laverdure and that meant so much more to me than winning the award because she mentored me and took an interest in me,” Healey said.

“I remember she said that she had seen some of my work and she encouraged me to open up and I went from 15 to 150 in one of my programs and then I went from bringing four or five to the United Nations once a year to 30 to 40, two and three times a year,” he said.

Healey heaped the most praise and offered the bulk of the credit for his success on his wife, Dr. Michele Vella.

He said she’s directly responsible for much of his success.

“My wife is my partner in every endeavor that we undertake. She’s a psychologist and she has taught me that my education wasn’t to just put myself on a pedestal, but that our education has to be reflective of those who invested in us,” Healey said.

Together, the couple earned a United Nations CTAUN Best Practices Award in 2014 for their project “Bridging the Gap,” an HIV/AIDS Awareness Initiative.

Vella and Healey developed diversity dialogue in the classroom and student commitment to community service.

“My wife taught me that we have to remember the people who supported us and to remember that we’re part of an interconnected community,” Healey said.

“It’s at a grass roots level where you find a lot of talented people and that’s what I learned from her. And, I found that to connect with the really talented people who are doing things at a grassroots level is great.”